


catharsis

by doubletan



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 15:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17470460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubletan/pseuds/doubletan
Summary: In which Yut-Lung wants to die, and Blanca is surprised that he cares if he does.





	catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> yut-lung is my fav character in banana fish, and i have so many feelings about him, and i hope after this you would look upon him more favorably
> 
> the fic begins after their argument (at night where yut-lung tells him about his mom) in ep 23

Blanca finds him sitting on the edge of the roof.

Yut Lung turned his head, narrowing his eyes at him.  A bottle of champagne and a half empty glass sat at his feet.

Blanca smiled innocently, but both of them knew he had intentionally shuffled his feet against the gravel so his arrival could be heard above the city noise of New York.

Yut Lung smiled back. It does not reach his eyes, but then again, in all the days Blanca had worked for him, none of his smiles do.

He seemed to have calmed himself down after their argument earlier, but Blanca only felt uneasy from his sudden change in demeanor.

"Blanca," Yut Lung tipped his head back to look at him. "Did you know that Buddhists believe if they killed themselves, they would roam the earth as a ghost forever?"

"But then again," he picked his glass up, stirring its content, "I have done too many bad things in my life. Too many sins." He tilted his head and drank what remained in the glass in one go. He sighed, "Uncountable." 

"I wonder," Yut Lung stared at Blanca, his eyes glittering among the city lights, "would that have been a better option than being tortured eternally in hell for all my crimes?"

He giggled, "I know. It's funny. The murder weapon of the Lee family who killed his own brothers believe in religion?"

He leaned forward towards the edge, and Blanca felt his blood go cold.

"May I-" Blanca begun, but it came out hoarse. He tried again, "May I sit with you?" 

Yut Lung narrowed his eyes in consideration, and Blanca felt his heart stop. If he said no-

"Sure, do whatever you want." Yut Lung gestured to the empty space beside him and Blanca almost let out a sigh of relief.

Sitting down gingerly next to Yut Lung, Blanca took the bottle and the glass away.

"You've drank enough," Blanca said pointedly, and Yut Lung scowled.

"Know your place Blanca." He snapped. "I hired you to be my bodyguard, not my minder."

Blanca ignored the bait, taking off his coat instead to put it around Yut Lung. He leaned back to look up at the night sky. "It gets pretty cold at night." He said in explanation.

Yut Lung looked like he could be blown away by the wind, but Blanca knew better. A boy his age who had survived this far alone was by no means weak at all.

Both of them did not speak for the rest of the time.

Yut Lung never stopped staring at the traffic below, but he also did not lean any closer to the edge.

Blanca took that as a win for tonight.

When the night begin to get colder, Blanca gently asks, "Shall we go down?"

After a long pause, Yut Lung nodded. He tugged the coat from his shoulders. "Alright," he said.

 

* * *

They walked back in silence. It was late and almost the entire household was asleep by now.

When they reached Yut Lung's room, Blanca nodded. "Goodni-"

Yut Lung pressed their lips together, one hand undoing the button knots at his own shirt deftly while the other hand rested on the back of Blanca's head to pull him close.

"My brothers used to sell me at exorbitant prices for a night," he said sultrily before pulling away. "But for you," he shifted, and his shirt fell away to bare his slender shoulders, "I can give it to you free of charge."

He circled his fingers around the front of Blanca's jeans. "What do you say Blanca?" he whispered. 

Blanca pulled back, manhandling Yut Lung onto his back. 

"What are you doing?!" Yut Lung struggled, "Put me down this instant!"

Blanca deposited him onto his bed, and Yut Lung glared at him furiously.

"You're drunk. You're going to regret this tomorrow."

"Who do you think you are Blanca?" Yut Lung shook in anger and humiliation. "You think I don't know what I want?"

"I know what you want. That's why you asked me to work for you."

Yut Lung stilled at that, his eyes widening in fear. Then he barked out a strained laugh, "Of course you do because I told you." He curled his hair behind his ear and crossed his arms smugly. "You saw the amount of assassinations that was plotted against me in the last few days, haven't you?"

Blanca shook his head. "You lied about the reason you hired me.You  _ want  _ to die." He took a step forward, and Yut Lung stepped away from him, stumbling back onto his bed. 

Yut Lung scoffed, but his entire body was tense, and Blanca could not help but draw a similarity to a prey cornered by its predator. "Blanca, are you trying to imply-"

"I'm sorry that I can't be the person you are looking for. Love and care can't be bought, much less through sex." He shook his head sadly at him. "Don't do this to yourself. You're not anyone's toy or weapon anymore, you've already created your own path away from your abusers."

Yut Lung stared at Blanca. He remained unmoving, his eyes wide.

Something ached in Blanca's heart. It was easy to forget that Yut Lung was just a boy, a boy who was not even of age yet. But now, he can see the boy underneath all the anger and hatred which he weaponized as his own shield against anything and everything.

It had been so long since Yut Lung had someone treat him with care that he did not know how to react to it at all.

Blanca was surprised to find out that he cared for this boy, and he felt the urge to say something, to give Yut Lung what he longed for so desperately but was too afraid to ask anyone for.

"You did what you had to do to survive and it wasn't your fault. Blood doesn't define who you are, you don't have to follow in your brothers' shoes or what they made you do. You're not a bad person and you don't have to fit in that role anymore." 

"For what it's worth," Blanca said, "I'm proud of you Yut Lung. For being able to do what most people could not do to survive, for creating your own path, for staying alive still. It must have been hard all those years alone."

Yut Lung's face tightened.

"But you're strong," Blanca smiled. "And I know in time, you will be a brilliant young man."

Yut Lung looked down quickly, but he could not hide the tears that started to fall onto the covers of his bed.

Blanca turned to walk out of Yut Lung's room. Yut Lung would not want anyone to see him like this.

"You're going to Ash tomorrow aren't you?" Yut Lung blurted out. 

The harshness of the accusation lingered in the air. 

Blanca paused. 

"Yes." he said.

"Go now then!" Yut Lung threw his head back and laughed hysterically. "Everyone is obsessed with Ash anyways!"

Before he could even think about what he was doing, Blanca rushed forward and enveloped Yut Lung in a hug.

Yut Lung struggled, trying to break out of Blanca's grip before he finally gave up.

"What do you want Blanca?" Yut Lung hissed, ferociously rubbing the tears away. "Do you enjoy seeing me like that? Being brought so low?" He shoved at Blanca's shoulders, snarling. "I do not need your pity!"

Blanca held Yut Lung tight to his chest. "Both of you may share similar traits but you're not Ash, and Ash isn't you. Both are you are equally strong in your own ways." He felt Yut Lung freeze at that.

"But right now," Blanca pulled back, staring at Yut Lung's wide-eyed expression. "Ash is the one who needs help from me. You don't."

"Be the one out of us three that don't need an Eiji or a Natalia to make us realize that we could be better." He smiled sadly, brushing away the remaining tears on Yut Lung's cheeks. "Learn to love yourself, and then you can love others."

Blanca got up.

"I-" Yut Lung started.

Blanca paused at the doorway. 

"Don't die out there." Yut Lung eventually said.

Blanca smiled. "Goodbye Yut Lung."

He stepped away. "Take care."

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://doubletan.tumblr.com/) , please talk to me about banana fish too many feelz
> 
> note: i do not ship blanca and yut-lung romantically.
> 
> i just wanted to rewrite that fucking scene when blanca left, where he implied that yut-lung could never stop being stuck in hatred and could not be better than ash who has eiji. wtfuck dude, that's the worst thing to say to someone who's already so mentally unstable and in need of care.
> 
> tbh, i really headcanon that yut-lung only hired blanca because he saw how blanca cared for ash and he must have thought if blanca can treat his target that well then....yeah i think yut-lung really wanted the same care as well that he never gotten. because if he was really concerned about the assasination he would have already hired more personal bodyguards right after he usurped his brothers. plus the fact he wanted to die and was fully capable of defending himself showed that the reason why he wanted to hire blanca made little sense.
> 
> i think a lot of people got it wrong by labeling him as a villain, but really, none of his motives are evil, but self-serving. it's really sad to see people hate yut-lung without understanding his state of mind then. 
> 
> he was only 16, and he was used by his brothers for years as a weapon but also was raped (as seen when he was clearly used to being used for sex when his brother asked him to go with eiji and shorter with dino and told eiji he does the same as ash did, i just wanted to say this because someone recently told me yut-lung was a slut based off what she saw in ep 9 and that really made me burst a vein. just because one doesn't resist anymore doesn't mean he/she was not a rape victim still). 
> 
> his life goal was to kill his brothers, and when he finally did he lost his sense of purpose in life anymore. and it just makes my heart hurt so much at that fact and that may be why he wants to kill himself. at least ash had a support system, he had eiji and shorter and max and his gang who supported and cared for him, but yut-lung had no one even though he suffered the same as ash. so evidently, he was much more mentally unstable.
> 
> and a lot of people forget that his state of mind was not okay then, and that's why he idolized ash and wanted to beat him at the same time to prove his strength and worth, where he was stuck in his inferiority complex where he believed ash was superior to him. and that's why he really hated eiji because he was jealous of eiji's happy life, and also because ash had someone like eiji who cared and supported him.
> 
> i'm not saying we should excuse yut-lung's actions, but this would give a better understanding of yut-lung as a person. he is really complex and emotional and i just love him so much and he needs all the love he can get and i hope he recovers fully :")


End file.
